Communist Tour

After the excellent free tour yesterday, decided to go back with the same company and do another one of their paying tours. The ones I really wanted to do where on later during the week but I wouldn't be around for them. So I went on a Communist tour talking about the rise and fall of communism from 1945 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

It was also fantastic cause Berlin was really the battle ground of some significant 'battles' during the cold war. So to walk around and have some explain the politics, life and where the events take place was great.

Also part of the tour was the Stasi museum. This was cool cause all of the museum was in German so the tour guide was able to integrate the relevant bits into the story that he was telling.

Now if you are like me and have no idea who the Stasi were, basically they were the secret police in East Germany during the cold war era. They were extremely efficient. During the Nazi era, there was 1 SS informer for every 5,000 people. With the Stasi, there was 1 'official' informer to every 200 people. If you include the 'unofficial' informers, this number becomes 1 informer for every 6 people. So basically, if you lived in East Germany in the cold war, the Stasi pretty much knew everything about you.

Again, the tour was really informative and interesting from my point of view. I grew up during the end of the cold war and didn't understand in detail the history and why communism was such a 'threat' - and what it would have been like to live under it.